The Art of Mentoring: Lead, Follow and Get Out of the Way
Peddy Phd, Shirley R.
Synopsis "The Art of Mentoring: Lead, Follow and Get Out of the Way"
"The Art of Mentoring covers some of the more contentious mentoring issues in organizations today: helping the new employee master the work and unspoken rules, improving interpersonal skills, dealing with job dissatisfaction, workaholism, cynicism, and the lack of motivation" (preface). It shows how to foster a mentoring culture in which people are rewarded for helping each other succeed. As one reader wrote, "Although an easy read because of her story telling style, Peddy provides her readers with hard-won insights into the culture of organizations and the role of mentoring relationships in this age of disposable employees." These insights come through the story of Rachel Hanson, an organizational consultant for Perry Winkle Enterprises (PWE), sent as temporary marketing manager to To Your Health (TYH) a recently acquired subsidiary whose sales have been dropping. Her assignment is to assess the reasons for the decline, see if it can be turned around, and decide which of the five marketers should be retained and which terminated or reassigned. She decides to focus on mentoring as a potential solution for all. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. As a temporary manager, she encounters a variety of problems in an atmosphere in which employees feel unappreciated by management, threatened by the takeover, hostile, and even indifferent. Through this story line the reader will discover the four purposes of mentoring, the process of redesigning a job, how to deal with difficult employees, when and how to use straight talk, how to counsel, advise, and help another succeed, as well as ten principles that every mentor should practice and ten that every person being mentored needs to remember. Booklist calls it, " Thoughtful...accessible...entertaining." Still, another reader says it is a "must read" for leaders in his organization.
